Some Time Later...
May. 31st, 2009 06:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormIt's the beginning of summer. Things are growing by leaps and bounds. This is not hyperbole, everything is several inches taller every time you see it.
I'm moving in the next two weeks to a place with some ground to garden in.
Yesterday I got two Wendell Berry books. You can find Wendell Berry in Chapters in three places: Poetry, Literary Criticism, and Fiction. You cannot find his books in any gardening section. Bookstores don't have an agriculture section; agriculture is not a pursuit you are supposed to think about that much, and certainly not one you're supposed to enjoy.
When I read Wendell Berry, or when I look him up on youtube, I go into a kind of a daze. I can't think straight, I can't think at all, the words just pour into me. There's nothing surprising to me in what he writes; it's like talking to your mom, or having that same old conversation with the lover you've been with for ten years. I don't notice the words of his essays any more than you notice body-temperature water on your skin. When I got into his poems Angus came over and asked if I was alright (I was just sitting there) and I couldn't speak until it was done, I just nodded in what I hoped was reassuring fashion. It makes me go so inwards to experience this essentially solitary part of myself outside; I go inwards because that urge to reach outwards and touch another person who is like me on this is an impossible one. There are people who are like me; they are not here. I am either afraid of them or they are far away.
And let me tell you now one of the reasons I love Angus so very much: I was watching youtube Wendell Berry and there was a comment underneath. The comment read as follows: No one can fully develop his powers in any direction without engaging in specialization. The primitive tribesman or peasant, bound to an endless round of different tasks in order to maintain himself, could have no time or resources available to pursue any particular interest to the full. He had no room to specialize, to develop whatever field he was best at or in which he was most interested.
I called Angus over to read the comment- I needed to say this to someone- and I said: There is so much irony in this comment. You see that word at the bottom, field? Every farmer's field in the world is slightly different than the next in its culture, in how best to grow things in it. If everyone were to specialise in a field the world would be so well-managed, if it were acknowledged that there could be an expert in each field and that knowledge was worthwhile knowledge, not something to be relegated to the stupid dirty bumpkins who can't succeed in business, that would be lovely. And if we thought of tending the earth as worthwhile, something to which bright people could apply innovation and can you imagine prizes for neat horticultural ideas come up with by small farmer businessmen? Then maybe people would be interested. If people could afford land... I just wanted to show you that, because there's so much irony there, and it struck me so hard.
And Angus read the comment and listened to me and as I started to talk he nodded and said: I see that. And he understood. This isn't his driving passion, but he does understand.
Note I wasn't addressing this guy's argument (but I can: I don't know which planet he's from where everyone chooses their own jobs, but I can bet anything that if we had a couple thousand less retail clerks and telemarketers and a couple thousand more permaculturally-engaged farmers per metropolitan area you wouldn't have any more issues supporting a population of neuroscientists, rocket scientists, and games programmers than you do today, and I would personally be -allowed- my choice of career instead of having to choose second-best) but just that intensely ironic use of the term 'specialise in a field' which he was endorsing but which he was, in the semantic flip, totally against.
Love. Angus.
We've got some baby rats going on. Twenty two have just gone to other homes, Roxanne has a new litter (it was a hard birth-- nine born, five made it and are hugely full of milk and the others were badly bruised in birth and damaged, I'm hoping she's expelled everything in there) and some should come home from Tacoma as soon as possible.
I am drowning in salad greens in my garden, and my peas are super tall and flowering. I'll be moving more plants than stuff.
I hung out with Adrian and Ellen yesterday. I love doing that. Ellen's getting her chickens next week, so there was work done on the chicken tractor and we put in a new bed. Hanging out with Ellen talking about garden layout and plants was probably one of the things that thinned my skin for Wendell Berry. It just feels like being me.
Also: sunshine, vegan cupcakes, need to start biking again, masquerade costume needs doing, new tattoo is in the works, I may get an iphone.
Whee.
I'm moving in the next two weeks to a place with some ground to garden in.
Yesterday I got two Wendell Berry books. You can find Wendell Berry in Chapters in three places: Poetry, Literary Criticism, and Fiction. You cannot find his books in any gardening section. Bookstores don't have an agriculture section; agriculture is not a pursuit you are supposed to think about that much, and certainly not one you're supposed to enjoy.
When I read Wendell Berry, or when I look him up on youtube, I go into a kind of a daze. I can't think straight, I can't think at all, the words just pour into me. There's nothing surprising to me in what he writes; it's like talking to your mom, or having that same old conversation with the lover you've been with for ten years. I don't notice the words of his essays any more than you notice body-temperature water on your skin. When I got into his poems Angus came over and asked if I was alright (I was just sitting there) and I couldn't speak until it was done, I just nodded in what I hoped was reassuring fashion. It makes me go so inwards to experience this essentially solitary part of myself outside; I go inwards because that urge to reach outwards and touch another person who is like me on this is an impossible one. There are people who are like me; they are not here. I am either afraid of them or they are far away.
And let me tell you now one of the reasons I love Angus so very much: I was watching youtube Wendell Berry and there was a comment underneath. The comment read as follows: No one can fully develop his powers in any direction without engaging in specialization. The primitive tribesman or peasant, bound to an endless round of different tasks in order to maintain himself, could have no time or resources available to pursue any particular interest to the full. He had no room to specialize, to develop whatever field he was best at or in which he was most interested.
I called Angus over to read the comment- I needed to say this to someone- and I said: There is so much irony in this comment. You see that word at the bottom, field? Every farmer's field in the world is slightly different than the next in its culture, in how best to grow things in it. If everyone were to specialise in a field the world would be so well-managed, if it were acknowledged that there could be an expert in each field and that knowledge was worthwhile knowledge, not something to be relegated to the stupid dirty bumpkins who can't succeed in business, that would be lovely. And if we thought of tending the earth as worthwhile, something to which bright people could apply innovation and can you imagine prizes for neat horticultural ideas come up with by small farmer businessmen? Then maybe people would be interested. If people could afford land... I just wanted to show you that, because there's so much irony there, and it struck me so hard.
And Angus read the comment and listened to me and as I started to talk he nodded and said: I see that. And he understood. This isn't his driving passion, but he does understand.
Note I wasn't addressing this guy's argument (but I can: I don't know which planet he's from where everyone chooses their own jobs, but I can bet anything that if we had a couple thousand less retail clerks and telemarketers and a couple thousand more permaculturally-engaged farmers per metropolitan area you wouldn't have any more issues supporting a population of neuroscientists, rocket scientists, and games programmers than you do today, and I would personally be -allowed- my choice of career instead of having to choose second-best) but just that intensely ironic use of the term 'specialise in a field' which he was endorsing but which he was, in the semantic flip, totally against.
Love. Angus.
We've got some baby rats going on. Twenty two have just gone to other homes, Roxanne has a new litter (it was a hard birth-- nine born, five made it and are hugely full of milk and the others were badly bruised in birth and damaged, I'm hoping she's expelled everything in there) and some should come home from Tacoma as soon as possible.
I am drowning in salad greens in my garden, and my peas are super tall and flowering. I'll be moving more plants than stuff.
I hung out with Adrian and Ellen yesterday. I love doing that. Ellen's getting her chickens next week, so there was work done on the chicken tractor and we put in a new bed. Hanging out with Ellen talking about garden layout and plants was probably one of the things that thinned my skin for Wendell Berry. It just feels like being me.
Also: sunshine, vegan cupcakes, need to start biking again, masquerade costume needs doing, new tattoo is in the works, I may get an iphone.
Whee.
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no subject
Date: 2009-05-31 11:37 pm (UTC)Where are you moving to?
So glad you came
Date: 2009-06-01 05:15 pm (UTC)Hope your cupcake experiment was a success, and that Angus is feeling better and was able to enjoy cupcakes and sunshine on Sunday. I opened the second bottle of ginger-beer -- quickly this time -- and had no loss of liquid.
XOX